Daily Archives: May 17, 2010

Heading to Mackinac Island and Colonial Michilimackinac for a field trip or Michigan family vacation? Stock up on these exciting, silly, weird and yes, even gross, facts to keep kids engaged on the car ride and to make the most of your visit.

When Dr. William Beaumont, a Mackinac Island Army doctor in 1822, realized he could dip food into a wounded voyageur’s stomach and watch what happened, he knew he was onto something big. Dr. William Beaumont’s ensuing decade of experiments changed the medical world. The life of his human guinea pig was changed from the beginning.

Madame La Framboise Harbour View Inn has preserved the home of Magdelaine La Framboise, a 19th century rags-to-riches story of a young half-French, half-Native American widow who went on to become one of Mackinac Island’s most successful entrepreneurs and philanthropists.

In 1766, Fort Michilimackinac in Mackinaw City, was the portal to the American West. Forty years before Lewis and Clark’s famous expedition, two men named Carver and Tute headed out from the Straits of Mackinac to find the fabled Northwest Passage.